A technique of generating three-dimensional data on the basis of images and laser scanning data is publicly known. The images and the laser scanning data may be respectively obtained by a 360-degree spherical camera and a laser scanner, which may be mounted on a vehicle. The images and the laser scanner may be respectively obtained by means of photographing the entirety of the surroundings around the vehicle and laser scanning, while the vehicle travels.
This technique generates a panoramic image and involves various kinds of operations to generate a three-dimensional model by using the panoramic image. Images to be used for surveying are required to have fewer distortions in the images, and therefore, a compound-eye 360-degree spherical camera is likely to be used. In generation of a panoramic image by using a compound-eye 360-degree spherical camera, base images having slightly different points of view are stitched, and thus, a generated panoramic image tends to be blurred at the border between the stitched images. A technique that copes with this problem is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2017-058843, for example.
The technique disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2017-058843 involves adjusting a radius of a projection sphere that is set for projecting a panoramic image thereon. The adjustment causes movement of a position at which an object in an image is blurred, thereby solving the blurring of a target object in the image.
Laser scanning point clouds may be superposed on a panoramic image to generate a superposed image, which is very useful in generating a three-dimensional model. However, a photographed image having point clouds superposed thereon makes it difficult to visually recognize blurring of an object in the image as described above.
Moreover, due to the same causes as for the generation of blurring of an object in an image, a photographed image and displayed point clouds can be partially misaligned. The displayed point cloud is referred as a “point cloud image” hereinafter. The displayed point clouds may have colors added to make them conspicuous, but nevertheless, misalignment of the displayed point clouds may be difficult to recognize visually depending on factors of an underlying image, such as color, contrast, and definition.